The Public Medievalist Staff

Paul B. Sturtevant, Ph.D.

Editor-in-Chief

Paul B. Sturtevant is a public historian and medievalist, and an expert in the way that history is presented to the public. His first book, The Middle Ages in Popular Imagination: Memory, Film, and Medievalismis slated for release in early 2018. His book takes an innovative sociological approach to studying public perceptions of the medieval world. It does this by delving deeply into the data from a series of group interviews before and after viewing films set in the Middle Ages.

He is currently working on a new book, provisionally titled Misusing the Middle Ages, with Amy Kaufman. It is currently under contract with University of Toronto Press.

His Ph.D. was at the University of Leeds (2010), and he has since gone on to do research at Cambridge University, at the Smithsonian Institution, and for a major EU-funded research project in Spain. His day job is as a visitor research specialist for the Smithsonian Institution.

Paul is also the owner of History for the People LLC, a consultancy firm, which provides historical consultancy, research, and evaluation services for the heritage, arts, and higher education sectors.

Victoria Cooper, Ph.D.

Games Editor, Columnist

Victoria is primarily interested in the way that history is conveyed, explored and shaped in video games, and in the depiction of the Middle Ages in popular culture and politics. She’s also interested in the literature of medieval Scandinavia, particularly the Riddarasögur. She currently holds a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Leeds Humanities Research Institute.

Victoria completed her Ph.D. at the University of Leeds at the end of 2016 under the excellent supervision of Dr. Alaric Hall and Dr. Andrew Warnes. Her thesis, titled “Fantasies of the North: Medievalism and Identity in Skyrim,” investigated the parallels between political and playful medievalisms, and explored the intersection of medievalist fantasy, politics, and whiteness. Prior to this, Vicki obtained an MA in English Literature (Leeds, 2011), and a BA in English (Lincoln, 2010).

Shiloh Carroll, Ph.D.

Assistant Editor, Social Media Manager

Shiloh Carroll earned her Ph.D. in English at Middle Tennessee State University in 2014 and now works in the writing center at Tennessee State University. Her interest in the portrayal of the Middle Ages in fantasy accidentally turned into an expertise on George R.R. Martin and A Song of Ice and Fire. Her book on the subject–Medievalisms in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones–will be published in March 2018 by Boydell & Brewer.

Arielle Gingold

Editorial Consultant

Arielle works as a professional social justice lobbyist and policy wonk in Washington, D.C. Her work focuses on many of the present-day issues explored on The Public Medievalist, and as Editorial Consultant, Arielle provides fact-checking and editorial advice on issues related to her professional expertise.

The Public Medievalists

AdamSimmons

Contributor

Adam Simmons is a PhD student at the University of Lancaster, UK, researching the impact and role of Africa in the Global Middle Ages. His thesis focuses on various aspects of transmission and interaction between Nubians, Ethiopians, and Europeans (via other languages and cultures of the Mediterranean) during the 4th-15th centuries. He is currently working on an ‘Occidental’ sourcebook to accompany Giovanni Vantini’s Oriental Sources Concerning Nubia (Heidelberg, 1975) for www.medievalnubia.info. Adam's Public Medievalist Articles

Andrew B.R. Elliott is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Lincoln, where he works on the representation of history, especially the Middle Ages, in film, television and video games. He has published on a number of aspects relating to all three, with books on film and video games, and his forthcoming book, Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media: Appropriating the Middle Ages in the Twenty-First Century (2017) examines the use of medievalisms within social and mass media. Andrew's Public Medievalist Articles

BiancaLopez

Contributor

Bianca Lopez is currently assistant professor of medieval and Renaissance history at Southern Methodist University. Her research specialties are in the cult of the Virgin Mary, exclusion and inclusion, and late medieval economic behaviors. She is working on a project that charts the exclusion and exile of Slavic and Albanian laborers from Italy after the Black Death, and the spread of nativism in Italian cities. You can follow her work at https://smu.academia.edu/BiancaLopez Bianca's Public Medievalist Articles

Brandon W.Hawk

Contributor

Brandon W. Hawk is Assistant Professor of English at Rhode Island College. Most of his research and teaching interests encompass what might be called transmission studies: the afterlives of texts, including circulation, translations, adaptations, and re-presentations in various cultures and media. His monograph Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England (University of Toronto Press) and book-length translation of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (Polebridge Press) are forthcoming. He tweets @b_hawk and writes regularly on his own website. Brandon's Public Medievalist Articles

ClareVernon

Contributor

Clare Vernon is medieval art historian whose research focuses on the south of Italy during the Byzantine and Norman periods. She gained her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2015, with a thesis on the churches built in Puglia during the Norman Conquest. Since then she has worked at the Warburg Institute, the University of Southampton and Birkbeck, University of London. She is currently researching pseudo-Arabic ornament in medieval Italy. Clare's Public Medievalist Articles

EricWeiskott

Contributor

Eric Weiskott teaches English at Boston College. His writing appears in the Atlantic, TLS, and many scholarly journals. His first book was English Alliterative Verse: Poetic Tradition and Literary History (Cambridge University Press, 2016). He is at work on a second book, about English poetry and the division of history into medieval and modern periods. With Alastair Bennett and Katharine Breen, Eric edits the Yearbook of Langland Studies. He tweets @ericweiskott. Eric's Public Medievalist Articles

HelenYoung

Contributor

Helen Young received her PhD in medieval literature from The University of Sydney in 2007. She is an Honorary Associate of the Department of English at that institution. Her recent publications include Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness (Routledge, 2015), and two edited collections: Fantasy and Science Fiction Medievalisms (Cambria, 2015) and The Middle Ages in Popular Culture (Cambria, 2015). Helen's Public Medievalist Articles

Ian D.Morris

Contributor

I’m a historian of early Islamic society. In 2013–16 I was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), working as part of an international collaborative project called Power and Institutions in Medieval Islam and Christendom (PIMIC). Over the course of this project I spent time as a visiting researcher at Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris; the School of Oriental and African Studies, London; Tel Aviv University; and the Netherlands Institute in Turkey, Istanbul. I’m currently finishing my PhD in Medieval History at the University of Amsterdam. Previously I studied French and Arabic at UCL and SOAS, University of London. I started my graduate career at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, in Islamic Studies and History, before PIMIC stole me away. Ian's Public Medievalist Articles

James completed his PhD in History at the University of Leeds in Autumn 2017, focussing on papal relations with individuals and institutions in the East in the late Middle Ages. He is a keen consumer of computer games and films, and an enthusiastic world traveller. In his remaining spare time he enjoys writing things, despairing about the state of the world, teaching taekwondo, staving off existential dread, writing about himself in the third person, and eating good food. And drinking cocktails on beaches. Best not forget that. He can be found on Twitter by following @mobilehistorian!
James's Public Medievalist Articles

JeremyDeAngelo

Contributor

Jeremy DeAngelo is a visiting assistant professor of medieval literature at Carleton College. Before that, he received his PhD in medieval studies at the University of Connecticut and has held fellowships at the Folger Institute and Rutgers University’s Center for Cultural Analysis. His usual research focuses on interactions between the cultures of Britain, Ireland, and Iceland, and he is currently working on a book, Outlawry, Liminality, and Sanctity in the Literature of the Early Medieval North Atlantic, being published by Amsterdam University Press.
Jeremy's Public Medievalist Articles

JessicaLegacy

Contributor

Jessica Legacy is a PhD researcher at the University of Edinburgh. Her work focuses on medieval medicine and the ontology of the soul. Jessica is also the creator and managing editor of Pilgrim’s Prize, a modern Canterbury Tales retold through online media. www.pilgrimliterary.com Jessica's Public Medievalist Articles

Kathleen E.Kennedy

Contributor

Kathleen E. Kennedy teaches History and English at Penn State-Brandywine. She writes about medieval history and pop culture for Vice, The Mary Sue, and other media outlets, and about medieval material culture for the academic press. She may be the world's leading expert on the history of coconuts. Kathleen's Public Medievalist Articles

KenMondschein

Contributor

Ken Mondschein is a college professor, fencing master, Fulbright scholar, and jouster. He earned his PhD from Fordham University in 2010 and is currently affiliated with the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Renaissance Studies. Ken's extensive publications on the history of fencing, medievalism, and timekeeping can be viewed on his website; his latest book, Game of Thrones and the Medieval Art of War, seeks to explore all of medieval history, including that of women and people of color, through the lens of the popular book series and TV show.

Laurent J. Cases

Contributor

Laurent Cases is a graduate student at the Pennsylvania State University. He studies the the transition period between what is traditionally referred to as “ancient” and “medieval.” He is currently finishing his dissertation on the vicarii in the fourth century. His other research interests include the city of Palmyra and its role in the defense of the Roman Empire in the Third Century, and the development of chanceries and legal culture in early-Capetian France. Laurent's Public Medievalist Articles

LucaAsmonti

Contributor

Luca Asmonti is an ancient historian based in Brisbane, Australia. He has lectured Ancient History and Classics at universities in the UK, Ireland and Australia, and published on the history of the ancient Mediterranean and European identity. Luca's Public Medievalist Articles

MarianneO'Doherty

Contributor

I studied English and Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds before joining the English Department at the University of Southampton in 2007. I now teach across a range of undergraduate courses from Old English to Medieval and Renaissance travel writing and on Southampton’s MA in Medieval and Renaissance Culture. I research and publish on topics related to medieval Europeans visions of their world. In 2014, my first book, The Indies and the Medieval West won the biennial European Society for the Study of English prize for best first book in cultural studies. Marianne's Public Medievalist Articles

MatthewChalmers

Contributor

Matt Chalmers is a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the manufacture of identities through control of the past, and his dissertation explores often overlooked representations of Samaritans in late antique Christian and Jewish sources. He serves at present as Week in Review editor at ancientjewreview.com, is a fan of wild interdisciplinary scope, and tweets with only occasionally alarming regularity from @Matt_J_Chalmers. Matthew's Public Medievalist Articles

MeganArnott

Contributor

Megan Arnott is a PhD student at the University of Western Michigan. She has an MA in Norse and Viking Studies from the University of Nottingham, and an MA in Public History from Western Ontario University. Megan's Public Medievalist Articles

MichaelBarbezat

Contributor

Michael D. Barbezat is an historian of medieval intellectual, religious, and cultural history. He received his Ph.D. from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto in 2013. Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for the History of Emotions at the University of Western Australia. His current work explores the influences of religious models of community upon responses to deviance and difference in the Middle Ages. His book, Burning Bodies: Community, Eschatology, and Identity in the Middle Ages, is under contract with Cornell University Press. Michael's Public Medievalist Articles

Richard Cole is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. He defended his PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 2015. He has published on medieval Scandinavian topics in journals including Exemplaria, Saga-Book, Scandinavian Studies and Viking and Medieval Scandinavia. He has taught Old Norse at University College London, Harvard University, and Aarhus Universitet. His book on the Visby burnings in 1350 is entitled The Death of Tidericus the Organist: Plague, Tension, and Anti-Semitism without Jews in Medieval Visby, and is forthcoming from the Viking Society for Northern Research. Richard's Public Medievalist Articles

RichardUtz

Contributor

Richard Utz is Professor and Chair in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech and Johann von Spix Visiting Professor at the University of Bamberg, Germany. He succeeded Leslie J. Workman and Tom Shippey as the third President of the International Society for the Study of Medievalism, and currently serves as editor of Medievally Speaking and The Year's Work in Medievalism. In 2017, he published Medievalism: A Manifesto (ARC Humanities Press), in which he challenges his colleagues to reconnect with the general public that has allowed medievalists to become, since the late nineteenth century, a rather exclusive clan of specialists who communicate mostly with each other. Richard's Public Medievalist Articles

RobertChazan

Contributor

Robert Chazan completed his doctorate at Columbia University in 1967; he now serves as Scheuer Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. Professor Chazan has written numerous books and articles in medieval Jewish history. His most recent books include: The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Reassessing Jewish Life in Medieval Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism (Cambridge University, 2016). Robert's Public Medievalist Articles

SarahRandles

Contributor

Sarah Randles is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, and an Adjunct Researcher in the School of Humanities at the University of Tasmania. Her current project on objects and emotions in medieval Chartres has been funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. Feeling Things: Objects and Emotions Through History, co-edited with Stephanie Downes and Sally Holloway is currently in press with OUP.
Sarah's Public Medievalist Articles

SihongLin

Contributor

Sihong Lin is a PhD student at the University of Manchester. His thesis focuses on cross-cultural interactions between the Roman Empire and the ‘post-Roman’ West, around 500-700. His research interests extend to the wider world of late antiquity, particularly the church and its role in facilitating the exchange of ideas, and the study of mobility in the Middle Ages. His has a rarely updated blog, Byzantine Perspectives, and can also be found on Twitter as @shlin28. Sihong's Public Medievalist Articles